


Anywhere, Anywhen

by Lily (alyelle)



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-27
Updated: 2011-12-27
Packaged: 2017-10-28 06:21:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/304690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alyelle/pseuds/Lily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a sticky situation, you sometimes have to use the only thing at hand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anywhere, Anywhen

**Author's Note:**

> I started this two and a half years ago (July 9, 2009, to be exact), after a comment fest with [ghraphite](http://ghraphite.livejournal.com/), which descended into utter crack. I promised her one day I would get it done. Today is that day, and I hope I did it justice. :) As always, I have many people to thank: Kay for the idea that spawned it, Other Lil for the various betas and helpful phone calls we've had since the day I began writing, Tess for her recent arse kicking and cheerleader arms, and finally, GNeil and PTerry for their fabulous collaboration Good Omens, without which this wouldn't exist as it currently does.
> 
> [Also archived on [dreamwidth](http://stowaway.dreamwidth.org/23349.html)]

If asked about the spatial properties of a black hole, most creatures of mid-to-high intelligence will answer that it is nothing more than the vacuum created by a dying star, akin to a giant bath plug that space has utterly and irreversibly pulled.

This is not entirely correct.

Newton's third law of motion states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

This _is_ entirely correct.

Therefore, for every kilopascal of suction it generates, a black hole will also produce an equal amount of repulsion. The effect, put simply, is tidal.

If asked about waves, most creatures of mid-to-high intelligence will immediately think of a beach and answer that waves can be caught, ridden and otherwise used as an enjoyable means of transport from one fixed, albeit watery, point to another.

This too is correct, and waves of light and force differ little from their more substantial cousins. However, one cannot simply ~~walk into Mordor~~ ride the wave produced by a black hole and hope for the best. There is an equation required to find the equidistant point between the two opposing forces which, as a creature of mid-to-high intelligence knows, is the only point that one may set off from if one wishes to actually travel anywhere. A further equation is required to determine the precise point of time during the star's collapse that this astronomical surf can begin.

There is a third equation which will generate the relative distance one will travel, but as most creatures who encounter the opportunity to ride a black hole wave do so for the thrill of ending up anywhere, anywhen, no-one has stopped to realise that the furthest point they could possibly arrive at from their point of embarkation is approximately the same number of light years as there are miles in an afternoon stroll around Hyde Park. Which is to say, somewhere between six and ten trillion miles, give or take a few hundred thousand; a piffling distance for one with a vehicle capable of withstanding the tidal effect of a black hole and therefore hardly worth the bother.

There are several living beings who are familiar with the first two equations, three of them humanoid. One works for NASA and was awarded the Nobel Prize for science four years running. One pioneered the earliest human time-travel device and now works for a subsidiary branch of the First Bank of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. He was never awarded any prizes, but he never forgets his wife’s anniversary and he tells his children incredible bedtime stories every evening.

The third is currently unconscious.

*

Donna Noble clung to the coral railing as though her life depended on it, which, for the last four point seven seconds, it had. When she was certain that the TARDIS's frantic pitching had calmed and was in no danger of starting again, she tentatively let go and crept towards the rumpled figure in the corner. A faint noise drifted up to greet her.

“Doctor?”

“Mmmrrrph.”

It was a familiar sound, one she thought she might have once heard at the seal exhibit when she'd taken her cousins to the zoo. She spoke again, a little louder this time.

“Doctor?”

The sound became louder and lower. The pile of fabric it emanated from rippled slowly.

“Rrrrnnnnggh.”

Donna nudged the edge of the crumpled brown overcoat with her toe. “Doctor!”

“Barcelona!” He sprang upright, looking around with a decidedly manic glint in his eyes.

“You what?”

“Barcelona? Ohhhhh. Donna Noble! Chiswick, London, England, oh yes! Donna, human, no. Where are we?”

Donna stepped back, regarded the man before her with a look that spoke volumes (or at least several chapters, and most of them unpleasant) and said slowly, “You're supposed to tell _me_ , remember? Great big black hole? Anywhere, anywhen?”

“Alright, yes,” he winced, pressing his fingers to his temples. “No need to shout. What happened, then? And why am I on the floor with a splitting headache?”

“I dunno. One minute we were flying along, like you said we would; the next it was like we'd hit a brick wall. You went headfirst into that thing like a crash test dummy,” she waved a hand at the central column of the TARDIS that he was currently sitting beneath, “and then there was this all out tug-of-war. I could barely hang onto the railing! And you-”

“Yes, okay, I get the picture.” The Doctor held a hand up to shush her. The thumping in his head seemed to have stumbled upon its life's mission: to drown out the voice of Donna Noble. Although, he thought to himself, at the rate she was going only dogs and small flying mammals would be able to hear her soon enough anyway.

“Well?”

“Er... what? Sorry,” he stammered quickly as her stance shifted from 'I'm going to beat you to a hideous pulp' to 'I'm a lean, mean, killing machine and I specialise in Time Lords'. “Sorry. Just... headache. What did you say?”

Donna narrowed her eyes briefly - more for effect this time than anything else; he really did look far too sore to be taking the Mickey – and sighed. “Where. Are. We? You said the force from that blast was enough to take us from one end of the universe to the other. _Safely_ , I might add.”

His mouth opened, closed for a second when he furrowed his eyebrows, and opened again. “Ah.”

“Ah? _Ah_? That's not an answer.” She punctuated the last four syllables with a series of slaps to his arm.

“Ow! What was that for?”

“Figure it out for yourself, sunshine. You're the one with the superior brain. 'Oh, look, Donna, a black hole! We can set the TARDIS co-ordinates for the equi..’ equa... What the hell did you call it?”

“Equidistant point of embarkation,” he muttered, her words playing over in his mind. One of them was rattling around like a loose bolt. _Force_. Force of a black –

“Ah.”

“That’s rapidly becoming one of my least favourite words. ‘Ah’ _what_?”

“Funny thing about force,” he muttered, clambering to his feet. He shrugged out of the overcoat, flung it over the console and turned to face her. “What d'you remember from high school physics?”

“Er – nothing. I didn't take Physics, numpty.”

He wrinkled his nose. “'Course you didn't. Okay, fine. What do you know about Isaac Newton then?”

Donna frowned. “He was... well, I know he went to Cambridge, Gramps told me. And something about... an apple? I don't know. What's this got to do with where we are?”

“Isaac Newton formulated the laws of motion. One: in the absence of force, an object is either still or moves at a constant speed. Two: force equals mass times acceleration. Three: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. A wave, even a wave from a black hole, is just force, that’s all. Force applied in a certain direction with a certain acceleration. According to Newton’s theories, that force has to be equal to the mass of the object multiplied by its acceleration, yes?”

“I... yes?”

“Yes. And for the force of that wave in one direction, there's an equal force pulling in the other direction. So, if we're being pushed through space by the force of a black hole wave, and there's an equal wave pulling us in the other direction - ”

“We stop,” Donna breathed, her eyes wide. “Like hitting a brick wall.”

“ _Just_ like hitting a brick wall,” he said with a grin. “That's my girl!”

“But, hang on. If you _knew_ we'd stop like that - ”

“No, no, no, no. Not like that. That's what the equidistant point of embarkation is for. It's the middle distance between the pushing and pulling waves, so that the opposing force acts like a break, gradually slowing us down. But if that black hole was a big one – and judging by the mess, I'm betting it was, absolutely huge – the initial acceleration would have sent us off before the opposing force had time to gather. So we go flying along,” he motioned with his hand in the air, “until the pull from other wave has reached full strength and then BANG!” his fist slammed into the palm of his other hand, “We stop.”

“And all the back and forth after that?”

“Ever carried a bucket filled with water?”

“Yeah.”

“And watched the waves ripple back and forth when you set it down?”

Donna imagined the TARDIS bobbing around in a space-sized bucket of water. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “I see your point. Alright, so this opposing force then. You had an equation for the other thing. What about this, how did you work that out?”

The Doctor swallowed. Hard. “Well…”

“Doctor…”

“I didn’t.”

“You… what?”

It wasn’t a question; it was the sort of word that left whole cities silent with contrition in its wake. It was Donna, the Destroyer of Worlds. It almost made him miss the lean, mean, Time Lord killing machine.

Almost.

He swallowed again. “Well. The thing is, most black holes aren’t big enough for the timing to matter all that much. I mean, there’s a couple of seconds difference but that’s just a tiny little shudder at the end in the grand scheme of things.” Donna stared at him. One eyebrow twitched ever so slightly and he carried on hurriedly. “There was really nothing to indicate that this one might be slightly oversized.”

“Oversized?” Donna hissed. “Over- _sized?_ That thing must have been massive. _Super_ massive. You could have _killed_ us.”

If the Doctor had stopped long enough to listen to the thoughts running through his head, he’d have heard a small, hysterical voice at the back giggling about black holes and pop culture, and a louder, much more sensible one telling it to shut up if it wanted to survive the wrath of Donna.

Now was not a time to listen to voices, however, even sensible ones. Slowly, he began edging away from the console, keeping his eyes on her, pitching his voice to a soft, reassuring level. “The TARDIS wouldn’t have let anything happen to you. Except for the obvious, we’re perfectly fine.”

“What, your head, you mean? I wouldn’t call that fine.”

He grimaced. “Actually, I was thinking of your shirt.”

“My…” She looked down. The sleeve of her blouse was torn along the seam and hanging down her shoulder with the sort of tragic grace that would have secured it a role in Shakespeare. “This was new! Oh, you are so many kinds of dead.”

“Donna, just… calm down, yeah?” He dashed to one side, putting the bulk of the console between them. “If you kill me, you’ll never get home.”

“I’ll figure something out,” she muttered through gritted teeth.

“We’ll get you a new blouse. As soon as we land, we’ll find you the nicest designer blouse you can think of. Limited edition, even. In green! You look lovely in green.”

Her steps slowed, though a cloud of murder still sat heavily on her face. “And where might I _wear_ this expensive designer blouse, hmm? As far as I can tell, life with you is all about running. And aliens.”

“Not always,” he said, slightly hurt. “Sometimes it’s about food and aliens.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“Just food then? Oooh! I know. I’ll take you to the most exclusive, alien-free restaurant I can think of. No running, I promise. Just dinner and wine and dessert. Lots of dessert.”

“Fine. L’Atelier.”

“ _Gesundheit_.”

Donna closed her eyes and drew a deep breath, hoping the universal signifier of utter impatience would penetrate his remarkably thick skull. “It wasn’t a sneeze, genius. It’s French.”

“I didn’t know you spoke French.” He frowned. “The workshop?”

“It’s the name of a restaurant. A very expensive, very hard to get into, French restaurant. You can take me there.”

“Oh! Of course. L’Atelier. _Bellissimo_! _Molto bene_!”

“ _Très bon_ is probably what you’re after,” she said with the barest hint of a smile. “So come on then, Time Boy. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner I get my new clothes and French dinner.”

“Right.”

He worked in a flurry of arms and dials and silence for almost two and a half minutes. Donna watched, idly wondering why he never seemed to move that fast when the task at hand was cleaning the kitchen or folding his laundry. Give him a pile of laundry and he was all thumbs, but throw a mallet and a couple of space rotors at him…

Her train of thought, had it been an actual train, would have derailed when it heard him speak again.

“Ah.”

“Oh, what _now_?” she cried, crossing the distance between them in a single, furious stride. She peered at the console where he’d been working. Aside from a cracked blank screen in the lower left corner, it looked no different to how it always looked. The time rotor’s frantic whirring had settled into its usual rhythm; the numbers he’d partially taught her to read that monitored essential systems looked fairly standard, although for some reason the printed logarithms were coming out purple and orange instead of their usual navy blue.

“That’s what,” he said grimly, pointing to the small screen with the big crack. “That’s the constellation tracker.”

“And?”

“ _And_ , we’re billions, maybe trillions, of miles from where we began with only the stars around us as a reference point. Without that to analyse our current location and calculate a trajectory from the data I input into the co-ordinate directory, we can’t go anywhere.”

As Donna’s brain picked its way through his endless spiel of syllables, her expression slowly changed from irritation to confusion, and finally settled on a state of marginal disbelief. “What, you mean at all? That’s it, your sat-nav is broken and there’s no back up system? Don’t you have maps? Like… I don’t know, star maps or something?”

“Star maps?”

“Yeah. Big, paper charts filled with maps of the constellations.”

“I know what they are, Donna,” he said. He recited his next sentence quickly in his head, calculated that there was a fifty seven percent chance of it earning him a proper slap, the likes of which he hadn’t seen for several centuries, and pitched his voice at the most soothing tone he could. “We got rid of paper reference systems a long time ago. The TARDIS was designed with computer interfaces to cut down on archaic manual navigation systems.”

“Oh, come off it,” she scoffed. “That library is huge and you’re the biggest packrat this side of our Auntie Pat. And she’s got every Radio Times since 1963.”

“What, even the Christmas 2005 double issue? I missed that one.”

“Which I’m sure is completely soul-destroying, but can we focus on the point? You keep everything. You must have paper copies of those charts somewhere.”

The Doctor rubbed one hand thoughtfully along his jaw line. “Maybe. Be a nightmare to find though.”

“Well, come on then! Let’s get looking. I’m not standing round here all day like a lump, it’s getting hot.”

“Yeah, sorry about that. Looks like the cooling systems got knocked about a bit.” He glanced up at the vents in the ceiling, wondering if perhaps they might have any helpful suggestions for saying what he’d have to say next. Even with his most calming tone he couldn’t hope avoid a slap twice in a row.

The vents stayed resolutely silent.

 _Typical_ , he thought, and let Donna get almost to the hallway door before he spoke again. “Donna, when I say nightmare, I mean it. It could take us weeks to find a star chart and even then it might be no use. At that rate, I may as well just try and map the constellations myself. And actually,” he grinned, looking far too pleased with himself, “not a bad idea. If I do say so myself.”

“No, you do not say so,” she snapped, turning on her heel. He screwed his eyes shut and braced himself for the stinging hand across his cheek.

Any moment now.

When it didn’t come, he opened his eyes. Donna was glaring at him.

“If you were all that clever, you’d have thought of that ten minutes ago. Well? What are you gawping at?”

She was emanating irritation on a cosmic scale but miraculously, her arms were crossed, and her hands balled into fists in the crook of her elbows. He said a quick, silent thank you – to the vents, the TARDIS, to whoever and whatever could possibly be listening – grabbed one of the chewed up pencils that littered the console and a sheet of paper from the printer, sprang towards the wooden double doors and yanked them open with a flourish.

A waft of cool ozone drifted in. Donna toed off her trainers, rolled the legs of her jeans up to the knee and sat, dangling her legs out into the dark, star-dotted sky. The only sound to be heard was the scratch of the Doctor’s pencil as he stood behind her, plotting constellations. Calm enveloped her in a cool, astral hug, and kept on hugging in unbroken silence for five minutes and twenty-three seconds.

“Donna?”

Donna exhaled slowly. Appreciating silence with the Doctor around was rather like taking a walk alongside the Thames in January without an umbrella: even with a best case scenario, you were bound to end up disappointed. “Nothing. What is it?”

“What’s that? Just there, is that Centuarus?”

He’d sat down beside her, and was now pulling the ridiculous glasses she knew he didn’t really need from his pocket, peering in the general direction of her knee. Donna remembered that a similar look of fascination had once crossed her grandfather’s face. She stifled a chuckle.

“Yeah, almost. I’ve got Indus down near my ankle too.” She tucked her foot up and in, tapping the freckles to show him. “You should’ve seen the look on Gramps’ face when he realised. He reckons I’ve got half the solar system marked out.”

The Doctor’s gaze travelled down her leg to the freckles that did indeed form almost the exact shape of the Indus constellation. “Almost,” he agreed cheerfully. He tapped his pencil lightly against her lower calf, three short, ascending taps, each with a matching name. “Lacaille, Kapteyn, Ross 154. And,” he leant over her knee again, “Aquarius! Just off to the side of Centaurus, like it should be.”

“Honestly, you and my grandad would have a field day together,” Donna said, rolling her eyes, but the slight smile she wore belied the pretence of annoyance. “Go on, then. Going to tell me I’ve got Leo and Cancer up on my shoulder?”

“Nahh. More like… ”

His voice trailed away as he looked at her shoulder, and was quickly replaced with one of his many Looks™. This particular Look™ was the one he usually reserved for new and exciting things that crossed his path; it reminded Donna of dark haired, bespectacled men in lab-coats, peering with silent glee at specimens of newly discovered insects.

She shifted self-consciously. “What?”

The Doctor ignored her question and stared for several long seconds at her shoulder, embedding the tiny brown freckles that sat just above the torn sleeve of her blouse onto his memory. Quickly he glanced out the open doors of the TARDIS to the stars in the distance, and back again. His lips worked, counting silently.

One, two, _three_ freckles, forming an almost perfect isosceles triangle. He looked back outside.

Three stars, matching it exactly.

“What?” Donna demanded again, and then “ _Oi_!” as he tugged the sleeve ever so slightly downwards. Several more freckles popped cheerily into view, two large and quite close together, with a third smudgy one slightly below and to the left.

He scrabbled behind him for the sketches he’d made earlier. He was almost convinced the broken air ducts had somehow left him with heat stroke. Slowly he dragged his eyes back to the dark horizon. South west of the first constellation was another, brighter star that could only be a binary system. A third shimmered below it, in the same formation as the freckles on Donna’s upper arm.

“Are you going to tell me what’s got you so excited, or do I have to wring it out of you?”

The Doctor jumped to his feet, rubbed his chin absently, and offered her a hand. As she took it and pulled herself upright, he said in a wondering tone, “I think I know how to get us home.”

“Why didn’t you say so? Come on, then!”

“Well…” He paused, scrunching his nose up in a way that told her he knew his next words were likely to get him into strife. “The thing is, I need you to take your top off.”

“You want _what_? I don’t bloody think so. I distinctly remember saying no skinny streaks of alien noth- ”

A skinny streak of alien finger silenced her mid-word. Several sheets of paper rustled in protest as the Doctor thrust them almost under her nose. “Donna. I don’t _want_ you to take your top off; I _need_ you to.”

Donna opened her mouth to finish what she felt had been a perfectly justified diatribe on string-bean aliens and their incessant need for a mate, but he waved the papers again and continued before she had the chance.

“See these? These are the constellations I just spent twenty minutes plotting.” She took them, peering down at the dots and scribbles. A pencil jabbed the side of her arm. “And see these? These freckles here? This,” he poked a sizeable brown splotch near the top of her shoulder, “and these two,” he ran the pencil down and around in the shape of a rough triangle, “match that exactly.”

He pointed to a bright star out to the right. Donna followed his finger, then looked down at the freckles on her arm. A small crease appeared in between her eyebrows. Satisfied that she wasn’t going to thump him just yet, the Doctor continued.

“Now, see the ones below that, near your sleeve? Have a look over there.” He pointed again and this time, she gave an audible gasp.

“What are they?”

“I don’t know. I should, but they look like any one of half a hundred constellations I’ve seen across the galaxies over the years.” He ran a hand roughly through his hair, braced himself, and tried the request again. “If your arm _and_ your leg have star-marks on them, I’d be willing to place a decent amount of money – maybe a Galletian _futhark_ or two – on them being elsewhere. Like on your back, for instance?”

Donna stared at him for a moment, the set of her jaw unreadable. Then she sighed. “No one _ever_ hears about this. Got that, time boy?” And she pulled the torn blouse over her head and off in one smooth movement.

“Got it,” he muttered, mentally shouting at himself not to stare.

In addition to green, she also looked rather fetching in lilac.

Ducking around behind her, he stuck the pencil in his mouth, lifted her hair up in a bunch and quickly began counting the freckles on the back of her shoulders. Several comparative glances out the doors of the TARDIS confirmed his suspicions; there was another matched binary star lingering over to the right, just under her scapula, and one in the curve of either side of her waist, almost parallel to one another. He let her hair down again, frowning, lists of stars tumbling over themselves in his head.

_A triangle. A binary system. Donna really did have lovely skin, so soft and white. No, a binary system and subsidiary star beneath it. A second binary set with a reddish hue. Like her hair. A reddish -_

“Yes,” he exclaimed, and with only a slight twinge of guilt at the way Donna jumped, he sprang to the console. “Yes, yes, yes. Kruger, Groombridge, Struve, _Cygnus_. Oh, Donna Noble, you and your freckles are _brilliant_.”

He grabbed hold of a gear shaped like a rotary beater, pushed it forward as far as it would go, and spun the dial beneath it. The TARDIS responded with a quick, lurching hundred and eighty degree spin that set its doors crashing shut and everything that wasn’t bolted down flying across the floor of the console room.

“Oi!” Donna cried, grabbing for the railing. “I’ve had just about enough of that for today.”

“Never mind that, Donna, look!” He bounded back to her side with a slightly manic grin and pulled the doors of the TARDIS open again.

The earth, green and hazy blue, sat out on the furthest edge of her vision.

“That’s…”

“Yep. Earth. _Terra_. The Big Ball. Third planet in the Sol System of Mutter’s Spiral, also known as the Milky Way; a hundred and seventy three degrees on an eastern circular bearing from the constellation of Cygnus, which you have,” he tapped her waist with the pencil, “right there.”

There was always the risk of misunderstanding his astrobabble, Donna reflected. Which was why she stayed silent for a moment before asking in slow and measured tones, “You mean I just got my kit off for you to work out the Earth was right behind us?”

“Well.” He shrugged lazily. “Not all the way off. You’re still wearing your jeans.”

The Doctor’s arm was suddenly peppered with three sharp slaps, each a little harder than the last. “You. Are. _Hopeless_.”

“Ow,” he grumbled, jumping back a pace and rubbing his arm. “Settle down. So it wasn’t my finest moment of navigating. But on the bright side, at least we know where we are now. So.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “How about that French dinner?”

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Donna held up the sorry-looking blouse she’d taken off earlier. “Green? Designer? Limited edition?”

The Doctor grinned. “You look lovely in green. Alright then – _allonsy_!”


End file.
